in chaos whether he's there or not. >> no doubt about that. and of course we're going to see what happens this week. it's supposed to be infrastructure week at the trump white house. i suspect it's going to be a week instead where we see john kelly thrown under the bus. that does it for us this morning. we're going to be live from washington, d.c. tomorrow morning. but stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. stephanie. >> thanks so much, joe. good morning, everyone. i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today starting withstand by your man and the backlash escalating after president trump speaks about two of his former aides accused of domestic abuse. the president also standing with chief of staff john kelly for his handling of these abuse allegations. >> he has full confidence in his current chief of staff and he's not actively searching for replacements. >> an infrastructure plan, well, anticipation of one. the president set to unveil his long awaited plan to help transform the nation in just a

few hours. >> to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit and we can do it. >> but some conservative members of his own party are already expressing shock at the big price tag. and attack of the bots. a striking new report reveals russianbacked social media accounts ramping up the propaganda, trying to influence lawmakers and media organizations in the weeks leading up to the releaease of e controversial nunes memo. their next target, the midterms. we begin with the administration once again having trouble getting out of its own way. there is lots they would like to be talking about including immigration and infrastructure. here's what they are talking about. certainly what they did all weekend long on the shows and of course on the phone with reporters. chief of staff's john kelly's handling of rob porter, his

mess, and why trump keeps finding a way to defend men accused of violence against women. that is not a pattern most people want to have. i have a great team here. starting with nbc's peter alexander live from the white house. peter, i'm not even going to say are they having any luck putting the rob porter situation in the review mirror. they're not. they're stepping on their own story. president trump putting out mick mulvaney and others with one message on tv when you and i both know that's not what's happening inside that house of chaos. >> you're right. the president at least for the first couple hours this morning avoiding some of those self-imposed distractions he's had in the past when he's trying to rule out policy items. like today, infrastructure. the beginning of another infrastructure week here. here's what the president tweeted early this morning. he wrote, this will be a big week for infrastructure. he adds after stupidly spending $20 trillion in middle east, it is now time to start investing in your country. the last time they launched an infrastructure week, that went off the rails when the president

was tweeting about other things. at the time it was a feud with london's mayor. after a terrorist a tack in this country. no matter what the president tries to focus orngs itn, it's the white house will defend john kelly's handling of the saga. and frankly the president's public comments about it as well. on friday, the president given what amounted to a public letter of recommendation for a man who was formerly one of his most trusted aides. here's what he said then. >> it was very sad when we heard about it and certainly he's also very sad. now, he also, as you probably know, he says he's innocent, and i think you have to remember that. he said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent, so you'll have to talk to him about that. but we absolutely wish him well. >> the president then doubling down a day later on twitter after the ouster of another

staffer. that was a speechwriter who was left resigning after some new domestic violence allegations. the president tweeting, people's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. there is no recovery for someone falsely accused. life and career are gone. is there no such thing any longer as due process? what's striking for me, stephanie, here at the white house today, you can see the white house officials here trying to sort of change this narrative, to try to reframe the conversation, reporting over the weekend from several people that have spoken privately to the president that the president privately is telling them he thinks rob porter is sick, that he's outraged by these allegations and is heavily concerned about it. one of his deputy press secretaries saying, it struck me that the president said in the past he thinks domestic violence is grotesque, that there's no place for it in this country. i can't think of multiple places

where he's said it and the president hasn't said it out loud for us to hear. >> i want to bring my panel in. axios executive editor. mike allen. former democratic senator, one of my faves, from the state of new jersey, robert torricelli, and matt welsh, for liberty magazine. the quote over the weekend, the white house can't get its story straight. your teammate jonathan swan wrote, quote, even in a white house that is famous for chaos, i've never seen anything like it. swan wrote, john kelly might be sending his team out with one message of what happened but they consider john kelly a liar and from those who i speak to in the white house, they've said to me, he's standing alone. no one is going to back john kelly except the president here. >> this is day seven of the white house answering questions about rob porter when they

wanted this to be infrastructure week. >> a guy who we never heard of a week ago. >> and budget day. but there's still no specific time line and even this weekend, the administration people out saying slightly different things. so, stephanie, over the weekend, jonathan and i talk to associates on both sides of this. someone who talked directly to general kelly, the white house chief of staff, about his story, and associates of rob porter, and we're told very different things. the associates of rob porter told us that he said that people in the white house had urged him to stay and fight. and he said that he had never misrepresented anything to john kelly. a member of congress who talked to both the president and chief of staff about this said no, that the general asked rob porter specifically about this, and rob misrepresented it. he said that this story would say that the marriage was messy.

and that there was maybe emotional and verbal abuse. but in no way indicated the severity of what was to come. >> all right, senator, could this be a matter of confusion or you think someone is deliberately lying to cover up what went down? there's always that argument the cover up er-up is worse than th crime. we didn't know who rob porter was until he went to rosa me xi cana for dinner and now it's all we're talking about. president trump is actually losing support of women over there. >> if you strip out the he said/she said in the entire matter you're still left with these facts. kelly allowed senior people in the white house to remain with access to information making critical decisions with no security clearances. somewhere along the way, someone should have said why is this guy still here and why is he in all these meetings without security clearance. take the politics away, take the

tone deafness away about abused women, you're still left with mismanagement. >> that's the strongest case against kelly but it's also what the message is to the world. kellyanne conway said over the weekend that privately the president has given aid and supported many women. it doesn't matter what the president has done privately. he's a public figure. couldn't one argue the 130 grand check cut to stormy daniels would be considered private support? it's what you put out to the world what you're comfortable with. i want to share what mick mulvaney said. based on a lot of our reporting, mulvaney is a guy who wouldn't mind taking john kelly's job. >> someone we know and trust came to the chief of staff and said look, i'm being accused of these things, they are not true. for the president, the chief of staff, to give that person the benefit of the doubt is probably a very normal and human reaction. as soon as rob porter was proven wrong, proven he was not telling

the truth when the photos came out on wednesday, he was gone almost immediately. >> okay. so i understand that, give someone the benefit of the doubt. we heard trump surrogates s ov the weekend said there was no due process. >> due process is a wonderful thing -- >> it's an important thing. >> we should never downplay it, particularly in the middle of a me too moment in which some people are going to get torched unfairly. the editor of the detroit free press i think has gotten unfairly maligned here. but we're talking about a guy who is handling memos that go to the white house. this is a background check. this is not a criminal case. it's a different standard. in order to go out there and say on tuesday what john kelly said. this is a vile smear campaign. you're basically saying two different women who spoke to the fbi under penalty -- if you lie to the fbi, that's a crime.

so you're saying it's more likely that they lied as part of a vile smear campaign than the truth. the overriding thing here is that there is no real gap between what kelly said on tuesday and what trump said on friday. if you're talking about he's going to go because of all of this, it doesn't really smell right to me, right. i mean, if donald trump is looking at how john kelly dealt with this, how is it any different than trump himself has dealt with this particular case this week. >> okay, and listen, i've heard that senior members of the gop also want john kelly to stay in this position because he runs the white house better than reince priebus did. doesn't it go beyond if the president has confidence in john kelly? here's what kellyanne conway said yesterday. actually, i want to share the quote where she said in a meeting with staff members mr. kelly said he learned of the true situation less than an hour before he removed him from his job. two people familiar with the comments said that most of the staff appeared incredulous.

one person said several people in the room knew that time line mr. kelly had presented was false. so kellyanne conway says the president has absolute confidence in john kelly. but twofold, most other people in the white house don't. and the public doesn't. so many people in the public don't. so doesn't it get bigger than the president saying he's my guy? i mean, the president said bill o'reilly, he's my guy, and we know how it turned out for him. >> part of your job when you work in the west wing is to have political antenna. to have political radar. to sense how things are going and how things are going to play. going back to the first moment that people in the white house knew about this situation, there was a failure to recognize how this was going to play. like the stakes here. let alone the environment that we are now in where there's now more rightful attention to these issues. you add on to that the "l.a. times" today reporting that

several people on the white house staff buttonholed reporters to say that they feel that general kelly's not telling the truth and is urging them not to tell the truth. so that's the problem with having this, like, no specific time line. and as a result, stephanie, a lot of the good general kelly had done in restoring order in the white house is now gone. and now it's back to being like in the early months, where you have the real-time leaking. where you have the factions trying to take advantage to each other. or you have the president musing and mulling to people on outside about changing he might make on the inside. >> you've got bros covering up for bros. ivanka and jared while maybe not officially, i've heard behind closed doors they're making calls all weekend long, who would be a good replacement for kelly in the event trump decides it's time to go. can john kelly survive this? >> he is now going to pay for all of his sins in organizing the white house.

everybody who has been kept out of the oval office, put aside, they're all going to come out now to get him. i don't know if he can. i don't know the man. i probably could not find an issue in which i agree with him. i regret he's -- i regret that many of the decision he's made. but right now given the north korea situation, given problems in the middle east, the risk of donald trump taking this into a downward spiral of chaos, oddly, despite those feeling about him and his policies, i hope he does stay. i don't think we can afford the chaos. >> all right, well, this is one of the issues with president trump. this weekend, he tweeted about due process. due process as we just said is so important and accusers should always be believed but they shouldn't -- excuse me, they should be listened to but it doesn't mean they should be believed straight out of the gate. there must be due process. when the president says it, when the president says people's lives are being destroyed by mere allegations, you have to remember not once did he mention

porter's ex-wives who are potentially the victims here. we got to take a step back and, remember, president trump might not know rob porter's ex-wives but you have to look at president trump's history. let's go through the list referring to rob porter. he said, quote, very strongly that he's innocent. we know trump defended roy moore saying he denies allegations of sexual misconduct with minors. when corey lewandowski was accused of grabbing a reporter's arm, trump said how do you know those bruises weren't there before. trump defended roger ailes by saying he helped some accusers in the past. and saying bill o'reilly was a good guy, after he faced sexual harassment allegations. bill o'reilly had one single settlement with one woman for 30 million bucks. get your head around that. yikes. trump even defended bill clinton. back in 1998, saying clinton was the victim in the lewinsky scandal. so of course here we are in the midst of the me too movement.

i turn to you, mike allen, are there real-world consequences for president trump continuing to take the position, can't be this good guy, he's one of my buds? >> well, you're right, "the new york times" had a front page tutorial on sunday talking about how the republicans cringe when they see this. this is one of the missing pieces -- >> humans cringe when they see it, not necessarily republicans. people whose common decency is somewhere in their bloodstream. >> i think there's a lot of people who see those comments and see the notable omission in what the president said when he came out and talked about this. this is one of the pieces that's missing in this white house. usually when a ceo or president comes out to talk, there's a huddle before it, and you say, sir, don't forget to mention the larger issue of domestic violence like you're a moral leader of the country and of the world and don't forget to mention the victims. and somehow that piece was

missing and i just have to add an asterisks here. there's lots of speculation. people are speculating inside and outside. i would say that axios reporting at this point shows there's no imminent danger to general kelly. that the president is talking about potential replacements. but people inside as of last night, early this morning, said they don't believe there will be a change, that kelly will stay in, partly because the president recognizes that that will be even further disruption to his ecosystem. >> i agree with that, based on who i spoke to last night. people said to me there's no job opening in the white house for the chief of staff, at least not as of last night and today. one other thing missing, ivanka trump, who prides herself on being an advocate, a passionate advocate for the advancement of women and girls. melania trump who said she was going to lead an anti-bullying campaign mission when she became first lady, we have not heard

from either of these women. we have to take a quick break. you probably need a nap because you worked all weekend long. you should apologize to whoever you had plans with this weekend. >> axios is always on, stephanie. >> i feel that. all right, thank you. coming up, the white house preparing to roll out the president's highly anticipated infrastructure plan in just a couple of hours in front of a conference of mayors. one of those mayors joins me next. going to be asking those mayors to come up with money they don't have. first, here's a great stress reliever for you this monday. dodzens gathered over the weekend in san jose for the annual great valentine's day pillow fight. feathers were flying. what better way to show someone you love them by smashing them over the face with a pillow. that's lovely there. if anyone's ever had -- more than a thousand workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day.

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in just a couple of hours, the white house is set to release its long promised infrastructure plan. president trump's $1.5 trillion plan over ten years will focus on repairing country's dilapidated roads, bridges and airports, especially in rural areas but it is dependent on city and state money and public/private partnerships. this morning, the u.s. congress of mayors is gathering to hear the president's proposal. mayor of columbia, south carolina, steve benjamin joins me right now. he will be in that meeting with the president. good morning, mr. mayor. president trump's plan is going to be offering 200 billion bucks of federal dollars.

now that leaves a huge amount, the bulk of the $1.5 trillion to state and local governments and private investments. what are your initial thoughts about his plan? >> well, i'm going to wait until we actually see the plan. take nothing for granted. the reality is this, miss ruehl, the u.s. needs about $5 trillion in infrastructure to make us competitive on the world stage. of what's being currently spent across this country on infrastructure, 75% of it is being spent by state and local governments. that's important to note. primarily using municipal bonds. currently, we're baring at least 75% -- if you talk about water and sewer infrastructure, the federal government spent about $2.5 billion. state and local governments spent about $106 billion. so as we go forward, it's so important to know the vast majority of not only what's being done in infrastructure now but the vast majority of america's gross domestic

product, 91% of it, is being created by cities in metropolitan economies. we just hope whatever we do here, whatever comes out of congress, is a reflection of exactly where the action is, where the economic activity is happening and we have a plan that actually makes sense for long-term infrastructure investment. >> take the dollars out of this for a moment. we know the president wants to streamline the approval process to get permits down to two years. so even if that doesn't affect the money, is that a starting point you could work with? we know being in a log jack of approval process is tough. >> sure. well, certainly. obviously the ability to get projects shovel ready and get them out of the ground sooner rather than later is always a great thing. we must keep our eyes squarely on environmental concerns. making sure we're not just building to building fast without any regard for our obligations to our environmental needs across this country which

i would say are at a great peril over the last year or so. >> amen to that, we need some thoughtfulness and long-term planning, not just building. the president tweeted just a few hours ago, this will be a big week for infrastructure after so stupidly spending 7 trillion bucks in the middle east, it is now time to start investing in our country. what would -- a tweet like that resonates with a lot of people. what will you be able to offer the president in order to move forward on infrastructure? >> tell the president in columbia, south carolina, we finished 5 of the last 7 years with a budget surplus. we have a balanced budget. we had the same tax rate we had ten years ago. after eight years, we tut taxes by 2 millions and restored them only to fund our police department with more resources. we've driven private sector capital into our city by creating an environment where private sector capital is welcome. we've done it against the backdrop of spending $500 million on new water/sewer

infrastructure. we'll increase that by about $300 million and another $90 million on storm water infrastructure. we are building great competitive cities on the world stage. and i would encourage a president to dialogue with america's mayors, some of our governors will be there today in the room with us. dialogue with us and we can show the white house, show congress how you can actually build strong solid economies. but we only get that by working together. >> columbia, south carolina, go gamecocks. thank you for joining me. coming up, we're just moments from the stock market opening after an extremely volatile week. that's a nice way to put it. will things calm down over the roller coaster?

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for a limited time enjoy two free perks, like complimentary wi-fi and drinks. a savings for everyone in your stateroom when you book now, during the celebrity cruises sail beyond event. welcome back. i'm stephanie rule. time now for your morning primer. everything you need to know to get your day started. we begin in puerto rico. several municipalities are once again plunged into darkness after an explosion at an electrical substation. no one was hurt in the explosion. and authorities hope to have power restored this afternoon. the cdc announced on friday that the u.s. is now facing the

worst flu season since 2009. at least 63 children have died from the flu this year. and 71 people were killed when a plane went down outside moscow on sunday. five minutes after taking off. russian officials said they're investigating all possible causes of the crash. and new york state attorney general eric schneiderman has filed a civil rights lawsuit against harvey and robert weinstein as well as the weinstein company alleging that employees faced, quote, pervasive sexual harassment. a lawyer for weinstein said schneiderman's investigation will show that many of the allegations against the former producer are without merit. note, he said many. a group of republican senators are expected to introduce legislation mirroring president trump's immigration proposal. the bill offers a pathway to sit stepship for up to 1.1 million dreamers, restricts family-based migration and authorizes $25 billion towards a border fence. it is not expected to pass.

and happening now, we are watching wall street as the new week begins. the opening bell just rang. the markets are up. boom. in just 50 seconds, already up 250 points. the question is, will we continue to see the volatility we saw last week, which was marked by the dow's two biggest single day losses ever. cnbc's dom chu joins us live. the first thing to remind our viewers, stop looking at your 401k six times a day. that money should sit there in the long term. don't ever lose sight of your long-term goals. but for those who are looking at it by the minute, by the day, what's to come of this week? >> well, i mean, the trading action this week has all been driven by either fear or greed. least for today, it's about the greed aspect of the markets. the market did fall by enough for some folks to come out there and say maybe things are not enough to step in there with a little bit of my money and buy some stocks out there. to your point, a lot of the volatility we've seen lately has

been the result of a lot of different factors. are people getting scared? should people be tapping or trading or day trading their 401ks or i.r.a. accounts? the answer is no unless you have some kind of imminent need for the money. oftentimes, reminding clients that risk in the market is inherent but how much risk you have overall is a big part of your financial plan. if you've got 17 year go like my daughter does before her college savingings are needed, maybe the stock market volatility doesn't matter that much. if you are a retiree who needs that cash next month or next year, you probably shouldn't have as much in stocks as you think you should. >> giving a shout-out to your baby girl. in terms of volatility, we saw so much of it last week because of the market technical. the massive amount of investors who, for really the last couple of years, have been betting against volatility, kind of got chewed up and spit out last week. have the reverberations of that kind of liquidation made their way through the system and we're

back whether it's up or down, to more of a slow and steady move? >> so you bring up a great point. a lot of these technical factors driving the marketplace are a little tough to understand. what you said is correct. a lot of folks out there made money by betting against market volatility. it's almost like taking the under if you're betting on a game. a lot of points were scored in terms of market volatility. time will tell. for right now, we can't bet on just this positive open being a positive close. the one thing we learned is this market volatility has seen all kinds of weird reactions at the close so we see how the next couple hours plays out. >> we'll see if the white house learned the market is an irrational force might not be the best idea to hang your hat on. >> following the money. that's what we do here. a new podcast called trump inc. taking a close look at president trump and his family business. has the president actually stepped away from the businesses

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conflicts of interest that still surface more than a year into the trump presidency. our guest is the deputy managing editor of pro publica. these people work hard. he repeatedly smiles, looks at the camera and says there are none, is he right? >> i don't know that he's right that there are no conflicts of interest. what he is right about is the government never anticipated there would be a situation like this. where a businessman has an active business in the oval office. >> we can say divesting from companies is the norm for trump's predecessors dating back to the '70s. even if the government didn't ever predict we would have someone like donald trump, the law is what it is. can he keep on trucking and say i can't have any conflicts of interest? and by the way, would you lobbyists like to have a party at the trump parties? >> i think the law is an open

question. >> how is the law an open question? the law is the law. >> well there are lawsuits going through the system right now that are challenging trump on continuing his businesses, continuing to have business, for example with states, with foreign governments, but the question fundamentally is yes, there is a legal question, but there is also a question of accountability and transparency. right. >> but there's not because the president already -- kellyanne conway likes to say the president's taxes have been litigated. they haven't been litigated. he did win, though he didn't provide his taxes. people still want them. the president has chosen not to be accountable. and people voted for him. i mean, he said, my sons are going to run the business. and d.j.t.j., donald trump jr.. many people have made the decision that these things don't matter. the only way it will matter is

how people vote in the midterms and if the law gets involved. so will the law get involved? is there a way the law can get involved? you can watch richard painter scream about how unethical this is, but unfortunately the president keeps smiling. >> all we can do as journalists is put the facts out there and try to find the facts. one of the things we are flagging is that there are lots and lots of facts still to find. >> all right then. well, what is your main goal with the trump podcast? i love you're doing it. it's great to get this information out. are you trying to get it out? are you trying to get questions answers that you can't yet? >> we are trying to get both things going. so the fundamental thing we're doing here is calling it an open investigation. by open investigation, what we mean is there are so many unanswered questions. and we have spent a year digging into this stuff. as best as we can. we're not bad at this. >> you're great at it. >> and yet there are all these fundamental things we don't

know. we don't know who his partners are. we don't even know if he's taking money from his businesses. by he, i mean the president, right. so what we are doing is saying we are opening this to everybody. this is the kind of it takes a village model of investigation. where whether it be other journalists, whether it be you sitting at home, we want everybody to join in, to dig in and help us find answers. >> wow, crowd sourcing investigative journalism. well, good luck to you. trump inc. is the podcast. you want to listen in. but probably while you're parked. because if you're driving, you might drive off the road. all right, they are back, russian bots working overtime to influence americans and lawmakers on social media. and new warnings that they have their sights set on one thing, you know what it is, the 2018 midterms. here's a question, what are we doing about it. oh, that's lovely... so graceful. the corkscrew spin, flawless...

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we talked a lot about this in the context of the 2016 election. but according to your reporting, this is still going on. we got to focus on the midterms. >> it's going on, it's going strong. what we see is it's happening again. these russianbacked accounts, these bots, if you will, are trying to influence the conversation. you may remember about a week or two ago, the release the memo hash tag seemed to go viral organically but new research is showing it was russianbacked accounts that tried to drive that conversation and now this new data is showing us that these accounts and this content is -- the idea of it is to stoke anger and breed conspiracy. >> i think what we're dealing with is information warfare. >> as the republican campaign to release the gop memo heated i, the hash tag suddenly started trending. a peering hundreds of times on twitter, often from manufactured accounts. >> what we saw is it basically

went from zero to 100 in a condensed period. over 24 hours, we saw it promoted heavily by accounts that we've seen historically associated with russian disinformation campaigns. >> jonathan morgan is the ceo of new knowledge. digital media experts who monitor the internet looking for things like suspicious hash tags to help online communities defend themselves from outside manipulation. his team saw release the memo picked up so much momentum that it began capturing the attention of a major media organization in part because of bots or automated accounts. >> i'd go so far as to say the release the memo hash tag was more important than the memo itself in creating this air of suspicious around the mueller investigation and i think that's ultimately the goal is to create the idea that something might be wrong to give people the impression that where there's smoke, there's probably fire. >> reporter: now with the men yoel old news, researchers say

russianbacked accounts are on the prowl, searching for the next hash tag to manipulate. first, president trump and the white house. the hope through social media influences the conversation and guide trump towards a russianbacked agenda. >> ultimately the president is trying to speak to his base. and if he believes that his base is interested in this ridiculous memo controversy, then he's going to amplify that conversation. it does mean they're being influenced by this conversation manufactured on media. >> reporter: the candidate's already on the campaign trail. >> i'm frankly very concerned about the conversation going into 2018 and the midterms. if we can't believe in the authenticity of these conversations we're having with our friends or with strangers or with people who we think we share some sort of, you know, common belief system or common ideology, then i don't know how our democracy functions. >> reporter: some researchers

say twitter and other social media companies should ultimately be responsible to stop this from happening and control what goes on on their platforms. twitter did not comment but said in a letter to democrats on the house and senate intelligence committees, we performed a preliminary analysis of available geographic data for tweets with the hash tag release the memo. our initial inquiry based on available data has not identified any significant activity connected to russia with respect to tweets posting original content to this hash tag. oo earlier this year, twitter says it notified 1 million people who engaged with or followed a russian-linked account in the lead-up to the presidential election. twitter says it is deeply committed to the democratic protest, protecting that in what they often call the open market square of discuss on their platform. they hope to strengthen and continue to fight these

malicious accounts or bots as we've been reporting over past year, stef. >> all right, thanks so much, jo. i need my panel to weigh in. bob torricelli, matt welsh. president trump tweeted just the other day, the had a political long response memo, which they knew because of sources, methods and more would have to be heavily redacted and blame the white house for lack of transparency. told them to redo and send back in proper form. >> release the memo was pumped out. devin nunes got it out there. the democrats memo, nope, not okay. >> and they are getting away with it. a different standard for the republican memo and the democratic memo. if you say it enough, and you say it long enough, loud enough, it moves on. that's what happened here. here is the core of the controversy. put the nonsense aside. somehow the fisa request doesn't have credibility because it came

from a private source. information from the clinton campaign. federal investigations always come from private sources. you get a warrant against the mob, it's probably a mobster. insider trading, it's from somebody on wall street. the government doesn't generate their own leads. of course it's private. this is a controversy about nonsense. if everything came from a political o pon entd of donald trump, that doesn't mean it isn't credible or sound for investigation. >> even if it's nonsense, the president and the republican part are going hard after the fbi and it seems to be working. >> it's not working at all. trey dowdy, the only person who saw the underlying warrant came out the next day and said, yes, i looked at this. devin none nunez didn't. this doesn't credit the mueller investigation. boom. fizzled on impact especially after the release the memo build

up. if anything, the expectations about what a bombshell this was going to be, compared to what it looked like when you read it released the energy on it. the grassley memo is actually interesting and more damming, but nobody cares anymore about this. >> i wish i agreed with you. i'm not sure i do. their strategy of wearing down the credibility of mueller and the fbi, at least in the trump base is now set. if they fire him or if charges are brought, they have a base for an argument out there about the fairness of the investigation. >> i think there is a base for the argument, but not in terms of firing mueller, in terms of how do you receive what mueller comes up with. they are laying the base for a political argument. >> on friday night, we saw the number three person leave the department of justice. we saw rod rosenstein's number two, rebecca, rachel?

rachel brand announce she is leaving. she is going to walmart. this gets us one step closer. the president doesn't like the investigation, get rid of rosenstein. who replaces rosenstein? brand. we have brand. forget mueller. this is president trump's playbook. is it working? we spoke of this in the past. it's a surprise to see them go after the department of justice and the fbi. >> this is the lead story of the day. if we go six months down the road, the mueller investigation is over. charges brought. congress has to act. all of a sudden, sessions is not making decisions. rosenstein may be gone. this person is going to make the critical decisions to prosecute the president and bring the case. that job is empty. i don't know miss brand, but american democracy is ordinary people stepping up and taking responsibility in critical moments. leaving this job to go to walmart, it's a metaphor for

everything is wrong with america. when you know the presidency and american democracy is at issue, i'm sorry, i don't know you, but it's your responsibility. >> they don't say what's going on here. did she get pressured? did she have a nice offer from walmart? i don't sit in judgment. >> how can we judge the choices people make in their lives? >> we have a right, when you see your democracy is troubled and clearly, we are months away from a major crisis with the president of the united states, expect ordinary americans to step up. >> ordinary americans, ordinary republicans, who for years, have been on the side of the law. the law and order party are letting the president and posse dump on the president every day. >> the ironies of this are

almost unbelievable. this is an fbi which bugged the phone of martin luther king, harassed anti-war protesters, took monica lewinsky into a room without counsel for hours, subpoenaed her roommate in college. we have gone through years of this and the republican party was never offended by the fbi. now, they are offended because of this, with donald trump. finally, you got religion after all these years. the irony's just abound. >> abound. all right, we are going leave it there. a twofer from the white house. president trump unveiling his 2019 budget proposal and long-awaited structural plan. a plan with no money. i'm going to invite cuba gooding jr. he's going stand in the door and say show me the money. we'll have details on both straight ahead. earned you miles to get to the places you really want to go. with the united mileageplus explorer card, you'll get a free checked bag.

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welcome back. no matter what, before we go, we got to share good news. there's always good news somewhere and we think it rules. if you didn't see this, a norwegian skier had a comeback. slipped and fell during his first lap of the 30 kilometers race bringing two russian competitors down with him and breaking a ski pole. it looks like a car crash. rather than sit there and wallow, he got up and thought, thought, thought, passing 67

other skiers to win the gold medal. i urge you to watch this race. if it is not a story in perseverance, determination and hard work, i don't know what else is. even though i'm team usa all the way, certainly love that move. that wraps us up this hour. i'm stephanie ruhle. see you at 11:00 with ali velshi who is not an olympian or skier, but he is a great guy. i hand things off to steve kornacki. are you a cross country skier? >> i am not. but i watched that and have never been more riveted. >> it was like a car crash in the beginning. >> he wasn't going away. it was a great story. good morning. i'm in for hallie jackson. right now, infrastructure week is in for a rocky start. the white house is struggling to produce a consistent story on the scandal rocking the west